the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Saddle River NJ,Resolving a lawsuit that alleged that one of the nation’s most exclusive towns had for decades enforced exclusionary zoning policies that excluded working families and people of color, the Borough of Saddle River agreed this week to create nearly 150 new affordable homes in a settlement with Fair Share Housing Center.
A 5-acre Bergen County estate formerly owned by legendary actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, and two adjoining lots, will be converted into a new inclusionary development with eight homes affordable to working families as part of a landmark fair housing agreement approved by local officials Feb. 10.
Officials also pledged to work with developers on three new 100 percent affordable developments totaling 127 homes to help satisfy Saddle River’s obligation to provide housing for working families and people with disabilities as part of the New Jersey Constitution’s affordable housing requirements, known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine. Another property to be developed by the same entity behind the Rosie O’Donnell project will create another 12 affordable homes nearby.
The settlement represents an abrupt change in course for the wealthy town, which had just begun a high-stakes trial to determine its affordable housing obligations.
“This landmark settlement agreement will give working families, particularly people of color, the chance to move into one of America’s wealthiest towns,” said Fair Share Housing Center Executive Director Adam Gordon, who negotiated the settlement agreement along with Staff Attorneys Joshua Bauers and Bassam Gergi. “It shows that aggressive enforcement of New Jersey’s fair housing laws is important to bring towns to the table and end decades of exclusionary land-use policies.”
The borough’s decision to reach a settlement to establish its fair housing obligation comes a month after another wealthy Bergen County town, Englewood Cliffs, was stripped of its local land use powers by a state Superior Court judge, who found that the town had violated the Mount Laurel doctrine by failing to permit the construction of a single affordable home in more than 40 years. Englewood Cliffs had rejected numerous attempts to reach a negotiated settlement with housing advocates and insisted on going to trial to determine its fair housing obligations.
Instead, Saddle River has joined the more than 300 other towns across the state that have settlements in place that establish their fair housing obligations, enabling the construction of tens of thousands of new homes for working families and people with disabilities in towns that have access to good schools and jobs.
These settlements came in the wake of a unanimous 2015 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that revitalized enforcement of New Jersey’s fair housing laws by turning over enforcement to the state Superior Court.
As part of the settlement, Saddle River officials agreed to strict timelines for construction of affordable units to ensure that working families will be able to move into the borough in the next few years.
“A substantial portion of Saddle River’s housing stock will be accessible to working families when this settlement is fully implemented. This settlement provides a strong example of how the Mount Laurel doctrine can be used to tackle longstanding problems of racial segregation and socioeconomic exclusion that plague our state,” Gordon said. “The process established by the New Jersey Supreme Court is working after 15 years of gridlock over how to create affordable homes in New Jersey. Towns are dismantling generations of exclusionary policies and finally tackling our state’s housing affordability crisis.”
I’ve heard it said that “It’s not your fault if you’re born poor. It *is* your fault if you stay poor!”.
We can’t have these undesirables living in our enclave!
Are we going to apply the same logic to, say, cars and boats? You know, I would really love to drive a $275,000 Ferrari. So, maybe we can set up a “low-income transportation” version of that. And, while we’re at it, I’d love to own a 100-foot yacht. A low income version of that would be great, too. I’d even be willing to pay a few million out of the $10+ cost… 🙂
Time to get out.
This is just another liberal “land grab” with redistribution of wealth. The constitution doesn’t grant anyone anything ,but liberals like rewarding underachieving and punishing those hardworking people. All this will do is create micro ghettos with shit all over the state
Dont blame the liberals. They are just stupid.
Its the developers who take advantage of us all that are to blame. They have put corrupt politicians in place who disregard our rights to own property and band together to make laws protecting those rights. Can’t say i blame the developers, if i could take from my neighbors under the color of law, hey, why not?
So, direct the criticism where it belongs.
I have to blame the liberals because it’s about ideology. It’s actually seizing private property by money grubbing developers using tax dollars to purchase and forming micro ghettos. No different than extortion!! The constitution doesn’t give anyone the right to have a home for nothing and in terms destroying property values of others.
Keep voting for democrats you stupid liberal Suburban bitches and this is what your going to get!! Dumb asses
To everyone in this thread: time to move to Kansas you racist pricks.
the only racist prick is you
ghetto building is racist
The guy who calls everyone racist and to move to Kansas needs to get a clue!! You sir my friend is probably one of those limousine liberals who lives in his gated community and pays no taxes.
As a lifelong and proud resident of Bergen County, having grown up in River Edge, I saw my parents work hard, deal with my and my brother’s illnesses and sacrifice comforts to give us a safe nurturing life in a great school system. We weren’t wealthy at all….I watched my mom work nights as a nurse and my dad come home late and travel all the time as an engineer. But I was proud of what they achieved. & I like to think I apply their work ethic in my own adult life….my wife and I are happily in a condo in the Pascack Valley area. Nothing was handed to us or given. Everything was hard work, timing, cultivating relationships and networking. Why should a subset of people get preferential treatment? Makes little to no sense. If you wanted to live in Saddle River or Englewood Cliffs, as a kid I’d hear “wouldn’t everyone, better make a few million$ by the time you’re 30” kind of jokes. Well….I can add “well you better satisfy some Affordable Housing req’s” to that I suppose. And I resent that race is made an issue here. The racial/cultural backgrounds of families are more diverse than many assume in this area. It’s about socioeconomic exclusivity, sure. You wanna be in certain towns, then you can either afford it or you can’t. No “participation award” for you, sorry. Goes for me too. And “disabilities” is very broad too. Many people have disabilities and are still immensely successful/capable.
Now the term “working families” is a matter of debate. Very broad. Are we speaking of low income teachers and maybe police? Families underpaid but still contributing to society? War veterans getting into new careers? Or are we talking about Medicaid /food stamp sponges exploiting the system & bringing in their influence from their previous neighborhood? And I’ve actually known a few people like that and those “acquaintances” become too infuriating to tolerate when YOU begin working after college and pay taxes. If there were a screening process to at least separate the hard-“working families” from Shiftless drug addicts and scammers, this may be tolerable. But I guess I am just “capitalist scum” for aspiring to work my way up to a nice large home in a “socioeconomically exclusionary” town, where homes are cared for and streets are safe at any hour. The Mt Laurel
doctrine seems to have us believe that all misery not only loves but DESERVES company.
Well said Bergen Kid
“This landmark settlement agreement will give working families, particularly people of color, the chance to move into one of America’s wealthiest towns,” – this my friends is how socialism works. That’s how many eastern countries were ruined during 30-40 years of communism after WWII. The rich must quit their hard earned privilege of living in nice areas and must make way and share their wealth with the poor. The gap must disappear and all should should come down to leaving the same quality of life. Look at their language also. They purposely promote division by mentioning people of color. This is pure Marxist ideology . FSHA is a scary organization and NJ is under their heel. To me it feels like FSHA hates the suburbs and is on a mission to destroy them. Bolsheviks were not much different.
Please explain how the zoning is specifically preventative to the groups you list. There seem to be many people who cannot afford Saddle River, who are white collar, Caucasian people living in neighboring towns. The fact is that Saddle River IS segregated, in that it is VERY expensive to buy a home there. The basic problem is not that expensive places to live exist. And the way to solve the problem is not to force people in those towns to build SUBSIDIZED housing. AFFORDABLE housing would be housing built by a builder that would be attractive to those who can’t afford more expensive housing…if you can’t call it what it is, then that lack of transparency highlights the immoral nature of the entire venture
how is Saddle River segregated????,because people work for a living? yes and the taxpayers pick up the the for new schools, sewage, police, fire, roads, etc….beside how is Saddle river convenient for people to WORK?
btw Ghetto building has be proven to be a failure already ie Newark got rid of most of its public housing in the 1980’s
Nothing but socialist nonsense. The state GOP should be running on private property rights and ending the Mt. Laurel nonsense.
GOP won supermajorities in both houses during Florio’s reign of errror. Whitman The Clown pissed it away.